Initial deployment to Belgium and France, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), with colonial troops including the Indian Corps. The British army was nearly destroyed by the end of the Battle of Ypres.

By early November, the Territorial Army, tasked with guarding the United Kingdom itself, was making up for the casualties in the British Army. Sir John French wrote 'that without the assistance which the Territorial soldiers afforded between October, 1914, and June, 1915, it would have been impossible to hold the line in France and Belgium, or to prevent the enemy from reaching his goal, the Channel seaboard.